The New Permanent Plateau of Delusion

The Elliott Wave Theory posits that human beings will do the same stupid things over and over again until they explode spectacularly. It's a tradition, dating back centuries...

In summary, the only people who are fooled by this con job are all economists, media dumbfucks, politicians and 7.5 billion hairless monkeys, plus or minus.

The algo-driven S&P has been oscillating between the 50 day and 200 day moving average for six weeks, but who's counting. Today is the third back-test of the 200 day moving average.

The machinations keeping the casino pinned at this new "permanent" level of delusion are central banks, momentum algos, denialistic idiots, and too many weak bears getting rinsed constantly.

Morons who keep putting stop losses at the 200 day:

On the topic of extreme delusion, this is the most deflationary event in human history which is why the fake reflation trade remains well bid. For now. This is the exact same pattern we saw in February. Featuring a tall wick on the daily:

Alongside the fake reflation fantasy, leadership is shared by the extreme deflationary Jim Cramer stay-at-home "COVID-19" virtual economy index.

(No actual index exists called the COVID-19 yet, however, I expect a new ETF any day now).

However, most of these new Tech stocks are recent IPOs, which is very handy when it comes to getting the all-important Wall Street IPO pump and dump back on track. Think Zoom, Peloton, Wayfair, revenueless Biotechs etc. etc...

What took 14 months during the last rally, just took 2 months now:

"That's not FOMO, THIS is FOMO"

The only stocks NOT taking part in this grand re-opening rally are the stocks representing the actual economy. Although they are up almost 9% today compliments of Energy. Which is further indication that this rally is running on glue fumes. 

Those who believe this is 2009 deja vu and hence the beginning of a new bull market, either were not around in 2009, or are sniffing glue.

Or, are working on Wall Street and afraid they are about to lose their jobs, which is the case of this capitulated perma-bear who decided now is a great time to buy stocks:

Among other mistakes, Wall Street analysts are still in massive denial as to how many companies are about to go bankrupt. They are driving forward by looking in the rear view mirror. Wall Street future projections are never anything more than an extrapolation of the recent past. 

"This is 2009 all over again"

Has anyone figured out why economists are such fools? And why the public at large continues believing them? These will be among the biggest questions of this entire age - how can so many university trained "experts" be so fucking dumb. It's Groupthink on a massive scale. They can never admit that their life's work is a COLOSSAL failure. These will be the next people to lose their jobs as college enrollment collapses like a cheap tent. The $200k four year college frat party is ending.

This study looked at how the $1200 stimulus checks were being spent. The economists believed that people would use them to buy cars and appliances - despite the fact that car dealerships and shopping malls are on lockdown. They were shocked to find that people spent the money on rent and food. 

Here Is How Americans Are Spending Their Stimulus Checks

“Given the size of the 2020 stimulus checks, we might have expected large impacts on categories like automobile spending, electronics, appliances, and home furnishings”

“Instead, it seems that individuals are catching up with rent and bill payments as well as engaging in spending on food, personal care, and nondurables.”

Where do you buy a $1200 car online, Amazon?

These people only know about the economic multiplier only in the most superficial text book sense of the term. This is a year over year comparison of the 2019 rally versus this current rally - the S&P has traveled roughly the same distance. This was entirely a Tech led rally, the rest of the economy is dead:

I still predict that semiconductors will ultimately lead the market higher from the true low, as they usually do. However, now they are lagging badly due to the newly re-ignited trade war.

Given his eroding re-election prospects, Trump must now once again dust off his patented strategy of using China as his scapegoat for all problems.

Meaning the much vaunted "trade deal" is over. He had to tear up this fake trade deal in order to get to the next fake trade deal.

Here is the longer-term view of semiconductors for perspective. The first crash in Y2K wasn't that bad. However, those of us who thought the retracement rally was a new bull market were in for a real treat as the Nasdaq tanked -80% in two years.

Good times.

One exception to semiconductor underperformance is Nvidia which is part of the video game stay-at-home trade. Now in parabolic blow-off mode. As it was in February. 

So-called safe haven stocks are ready to re-implode.

Bueller?

In summary, JC Penney is now officially bankrupt, meaning Amazon "won" the war of the 100% virtual economy.

NOW, the casino class is going to partake in the Pyrrhic spoils of victory. And learn the hardest way possible that there is no such thing as a virtual economy.

And that only total fucking morons would believe otherwise.

Today's economists who collectively exhibit the IQ of a dead gopher, will NEVER be trusted again.

Nature Won. Thank God.

Because of nature, we will no longer be imprisoned by morally challenged sanctimonious hypocrites with a compulsion for electing morons, in their own image...

The Trump carbon tax is due. Payable in denialistic dumbfucks. The ONLY thing that made sense over this past decade's failed bailout gimmickry was that the stakes kept getting raised higher and higher, until now - it all makes perfect sense. 2008 didn't finish the job, so we upped the ante 10x for this next round of rational self-implosion, in the Ayn Randian tradition.

"Once I stood to lose her

When I saw what I had done

Bound down and flew away the hours

Of her garden and her sun

So I tried to warn her

I'll turn to see her weep

Forty days and forty nights

And it's still coming down on me"

I think we all see where I'm going with this:

There's no audience for reality anymore. Because there never was one, in the history of humanity. Which is how we ended up with 8,000 religions, but who's counting. Everyone smoking their own brand of bullshit while enjoying extreme conviction in what won't happen. Ending with an Evangelical movement that uses Jesus as a shield for their nefarious acts. Not the first to use this trick by any means. The iron cross was a prominent feature in all Nazi propaganda. 

“Evangelicals have lost all moral authority”

Jones said he came to realize that a “massive sea change” had occurred among conservative Christians. They had abandoned their traditional self-understanding as “values voters” to become “nostalgia voters”"


If we can't be great again, we at least have to pretend.

These Trump zealots have a right to be worried. Their entire way of life is circling the toilet, like a massive turd, while they watch, mesmerized. 

Fortunately for us realists i.e. all five of us, the world is not ending - far from it, only a failed way of life is ending. And those who cling to it will go down with the ship. So it can come as no surprise that today's geezers are living in fear - after all, this disaster that was supposed to blow up on future generations is blowing up on THEM. Just when you think everyone else is about to get fucked over, come to find out, you ARE everyone else. 

For her part, Mother Nature could not be happier. The birds are singing, the sun is shining, and the world is still turning. Everything else is a minor detail. A self-inflicted crisis fabricated by hairless monkeys.

When I think of the biggest disinformers of this age, of course the Anti-Christ tops the list. This era wouldn't be the end times without him. However, not far below him are Sean Hannity & Friends and Rush Limbaugh. All are one stop shopping for what is entirely wrong with this era - loud, crass, arrogant, morally and intellectually dead. On a similar scale, Joe Kernen is the reason why my TV remains on mute all morning until Jim Cramer updates us on which stocks I should buy in a depression, per his proprietary COVID-19 index, which had another great week. 

“Almost everybody else in the industry is shut and it’s crushing the economy,” Cramer said. “I’d be okay with that if our leaders had a plan” but it “increasingly feels like that’s not an option” for the country."

“The whole point of the lockdown is to buy time for the federal government to build out testing and contact tracing, but if the government’s not doing that with alacrity, we’re buying time for nothing”

We are now seeing the downsides of having a total fucking idiot for president. The price will be paid in carbon tax.


History will say they were accomplices to mass murder - first in Vietnam, then in Iraq/Afghanistan, and then in the USA.

But as Howard Stern pointed out this week, it's not Trump's fault he got elected. The exact same people who re-elected George W. Bush after they KNEW he lied about WMDs in Iraq were the same ones who got blown up by Wall Street de-regulation in 2008. AND the same idiots who elected Trump, who ALSO de-regulated Wall Street as his first order of business.

For those who didn't see this as being long overdue, make no mistake, these ARE the end times.

WARNING: MAGA Crash In Progress

Those who are wed to lies are about to self-destruct...

As you can see I am blogging less often lately because we are now in the last stage burial phase of this Roman orgy of lying known as "MAGA". The alt-right is spewing conspiracy theories out their ass constantly in order to win the upcoming election. No wonder no one takes them seriously - even when they get their facts right, it's merely a drop in a sewer of toxic disinformation.

Suffice to say, Trump is the right president for this time - a profoundly ignorant sociopathic denialist hellbent on using others to get what HE wants...

There is no point in crying over spilled milk, however not a day goes by when alt-libertarians are not informing us that this pandemic is just another Democratic hoax or conspiracy. One such article on Zerohedge recounts the 1968 Hong Kong flu as the closest analog of a global pandemic mirroring Coronavirus. The author notes that the flu passed almost unnoticed in the U.S. despite being even deadlier on a per capita basis. That particular flu also targeted the population over age 65. Most of these type of conspiracy articles point out that this mass hysteria is amplified by the media, and I have to agree. I would specifically note that the alt-right bullshit factory is particularly adept at spreading mass disinformation, mass confusion, and mass hysteria. Therefore, it's highly ironic that the very time they really should be heeded, they are TOTALLY ignored even by their own aging base. That's what happens when you spew crap non-stop, you lose ALL credibility. Incidentally, there are two factors that differentiate 1968 Hong Flu to Coronavirus - first off, the Baby Boomers were in their youth back then and now they are in their frail latter years. Back in 1968 they were too busy fighting for or against the Vietnam war to notice a global pandemic. Secondly, obesity has exploded in the past half century compliments of corporate junk food. Meaning that the two main risk vectors - age and obesity are nothing like 1968.

Trump knows that he can't get re-elected if the economy doesn't come back strong by November so he has staked this entire election on maximum re-opening. If it happens to kill a few million people, so be it. As expected, Republicans have already declared the latest Democratic stimulus proposal is dead on arrival. Anything that could possibly slow the re-opening of the economy is going to be seen as detrimental to Trump's re-election. The battle lines are drawn. However, another hampering factor for today's zero economic multiplier is the tsunami of lawsuits and overall massive liability now faced by businesses attempting to re-open. Which is leading to a new set of arcane rules around social distancing. None of which will be accretive to GDP.

Getting back to the casino and the topic of disinformation,  among the many lethal aspects of this era are these ubiquitous investment psychopaths who keep advising the herd to ride out the new greater depression in stocks, on the basis that "there is no alternative". Global poverty deflation has collapsed interest rates to 700 year lows and hence the only option is to "buy stocks". Because everyone knows they never go down. On a 100 year timeframe. 

Yesterday, two well known hedge fund titans - David Tepper and Stanley Druckenmiller - declared that today's market valuations are to paraphrase, ludicrous. Druckenmiller called the v-shaped recovery theory an outright fantasy. No wonder it's the standard assumption among investment advisors. 

All this week, the rhetoric between the U.S. and China has been heating up. It's Trump's latest gambit to direct attention from his sheer incompetence and rampant corruption. Trump's entire life strategy is to re-direct blame from himself to others. It's the infantile "I know you are, but what am I?" strategy. His followers are fully onboard with it because he tells them exactly what they need to hear, regardless of how fake and fraudulent the message may be. Meanwhile, re-direction is a Faux News core strategy as well. Remember Benghazi? That minor fiasco was exploded out of all proportion in order to deflect attention away from the multi-decade mass murder taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least that's what history will say. 

Be that as it may, all of this chicanery is why, after a two day heavy selloff (Tuesday/Wednesday), gamblers rudely were awakened to this headline:

"President Donald Trump said he’s “looking at” Chinese companies that trade on ⁦the NYSE and Nasdaq exchanges but do not follow U.S. accounting rules.

“We are looking at that very strongly,” Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo"

Trump followed up by saying that getting tough on Chinese companies on the exchanges could backfire."

Indeed. Where this gets interesting is that I noticed this week that cross-listed (U.S./China) Chinese Tech stocks have been leading this last gasp Tech rally. In addition, they are now almost 100% correlated with U.S. Tech.

In other words, Big Donny just imploded the global Tech bubble:

Zooming out to look at mass delusion from a decade perspective, here we see the crash ratio overlaid with the internet index (gray), top pane. This week, the crash ratio just made a new cycle low below the March crash level. In the bottom pane we see retail (small investor) cash balances. Whereas in 2008, the extreme breadth divergence attended a decline in Tech stocks, this time it attends a rally:

Writing as of Thursday morning, post another ~3 million jobless claims, the S&P is through all support and now heading for a re-test:

This time the MAGA caps will be joining the ride (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon):

Which is why I am now calling this hardest of all landings, the MAGA Crash. Because those who believe Trump and his cabal of liars are about to shit a brick

Globalization Is Over. Put A Fork In It.

Coronavirus accelerated the demise of the consumption oriented lifestyle. Those who didn't get the memo will suffer in relation to their addiction to failure...


"All forward decks are now open for swimming"

Coronavirus imploded the global economic model known as Globalization. It was the last nail in the coffin, and a long time coming. Only ever-larger monetary bailouts post-2008 kept this fraud going this long. Globalization was never about solving global poverty it was solely about monetizing global poverty. Instead of raising Third World living standards, it lowered the developed world standard of living by imploding the middle class. A highly profitable, albeit temporary, industrial arbitrage brokered with massive amounts of deflationary debt.

Few if any of today's well known economists have ever openly admitted that it was a failure. Because from their lofty ivory tower, it was all going so well, for them. Fuck everyone else. Not only were their asset values constantly elevated, but their cost of living was constantly falling as well. 

Globalization and its vocal supporters, were human history's biggest example of survivor bias. The people who extolled the benefits of the model were those who were its prime beneficiaries. Bill Gates informed us in 2014, (and more than once since then) that by any measure the world has never been better. The richest man in the world is apparently the official spokesperson for the slums of Calcutta. Because who better qualified to know what it's like to live at the absolute bottom of the Ponzi scheme, than the guy at the absolute top. His entire life has been a fantasy. 

The moronic media and the dunces at large were of course complicit in this long running scam. Never once questioning official narratives, even as the economic body count stacked up.

Always the same failing rejoinder, "This is the best system ever invented".

Well now, this fantastic system is imploding in broad daylight. Even as moronic gamblers are currently of the belief that we have successfully transitioned to a totally online virtual economy -  The truth is the EXACT opposite, we have now "successfully" transitioned to a totally offline economy. The global economy is shutdown and it's never coming back in the same way as before. This is a new age of frugality. The average household entered this fiasco totally unprepared. Now they are facing extreme economic uncertainty. As we see below the personal savings rate is at a forty year high due to the lockdown. However, social distancing measures will make this re-opening an economic dud. Economic activity will be a fraction of its former level. This lockdown has changed peoples' work patterns and consumption patterns, perhaps forever. 

This week the Fed confirmed that they are NOT considering negative interest rates, which means that REAL interest rates are rising due to extreme deflation.

The deflationary mindset is fully in place. Meaning people know that if they wait they will get better prices on EVERYTHING. Want a used Ferrari? Wait 12 months for the 70% off sale. 

The average business is even far worse off than the "consumer". The vast majority of the bailout money was targeted to workers not businesses. Businesses of all sizes are now twisting in the wind. QE won't work in this environment due to the total collapse in demand. Under these prevailing conditions, the economic multiplier is the limit approaching zero. Meaning that money is not circulating amidst businesses, because the majority of businesses are shutdown.

Meanwhile, the Democrats keep pounding away at the universal basic income, while Republicans keep pushing back. I believe this will be the central issue of the 2020 election. Over the coming months, Republicans will be forced to choose between mass poverty and failing capitalism. All of their failed ideologies are on the table now. And their political future is the table stakes. If they pull the trigger and vote for FULL MMT it would be tantamount to admitting they've abandoned capitalism. The alternative is ever-deepening poverty.

Either way, the party goes under the bus, because today's Conservative "think tanks" such as the Heritage Foundation are adamant that there should be no more fiscal stimulus for anyone. 

"Individuals and businesses react to new government programs by scaling back their personal spending and shifting—rather than expanding—production, canceling out any theoretical benefits. Instead, Congress should allow the private sector to drive the recovery by removing barriers preventing businesses from expanding, hiring, and creating new products."


How many times have we heard this same bullshit in the past 40 years - we need to remove barriers such as labor protections and taxes to allow free enterprise to thrive.

“The problem is that quality of the stock of jobs on offer has been deteriorating for the last 30 years,”

The “whole story” told by the index, he adds, is “the devaluation of American labor.”


Labor share of the economy:

This isn't about "stimulus", this is about survival. Which means that these traitorous sleaze bags at these Stink Tanks will need to find a new country to bilk in their next life, because this one IS OVER. I see a much scaled down conservative movement on the other side of this collapse. One that constantly propagates the narrative that if we had only squeezed the middle class more we would have reached the promised land of broad based prosperity. The same lethal delusion they've been propagating for decades. Eventually someone dumb enough will come along and believe them again. In the meantime, today's Republican useful carbon is spent. 

Fear of Missing Crash 2.0. Panic Edition.

Back prior to the last election Trump predicted that the casino would explode due to excessive monetary lubrication. I usually hate when he's right, however, what remains of Trumptopia is rigged to explode. Having round tripped back to terminal delusion, the next stop for social mood is panic...

Most people don't believe that social mood drives markets, which is why it works. These people are too busy predicting the future to realize they got caught up in a dumbfuck mania in the here and now.

The zombies have had plenty of warning and yet TWICE they believed that the Corona pandemonium was a buying opportunity. Something about being a mindless social media Borg is interfering with their thought process. Needless to say they are well lubricated for what comes next. Of course I said the same thing in February and yet they came back for even more punishment. 

No question, central banks and momentum algos have in many ways supplanted the human footprint in markets. Fear and greed have been replaced by money printing and volatility compression, in order to ensure that nothing approaching reality sets foot in Trump Casino ever again. Nevertheless, outside of the passive mega indexes, the footprint of social mood is clearly visible:

Here we see the Global Dow which peaked over two years ago (January 2018) and is three wave corrective at ALL degrees of trend:

The average U.S. stock peaked in October 2018 and as we see, the 2019 rally exhibits the same three wave corrective form, albeit much flatter:

I can't really say why speculators were so exuberant at the top in February. All I know is that we are seeing the exact same FOMC (Fear of Missing Crash) now.

Greed is truly blindness:

Re: February 21st, 2020:

"You would think that the coronavirus concerns gripping China (and the world) would cause massive panic and fear in stock prices. And it sure felt like they were... for a moment at least. But it didn't last long."

This, my friend, is the Melt Up."

Indeed. The market peaked two days BEFORE this article was written (Feb. 19th). The U.S. stock melt-up arrived right before the most violent crash in U.S. history. 

Where it gets interesting - and I pointed this out in February - is that Chinese speculative Tech stocks were leading the global rally at that time. I "speculated" that Chinese gamblers were trapped at home bidding up their own portfolios:

Here we see the ChiNext (Chinese Nasdaq), wave 'c' was the Corona top, February 25th, which was a few days AFTER the S&P peaked. 

Where this gets interesting is that during the April rally, U.S. gamblers were trapped at home bidding up their own portfolios, just as the Chinese were doing in February. 

Whereas the February melt-up was lubricated by the PBOC, this latest melt-up was lubricated by the Fed. In other words TWO central bank sponsored Corona melt-ups in a row.

And yet despite the exact same circumstances a mere two months apart, every pundit today is still wondering what comes next. 

I think we have an idea. 

What these combined melt-ups have accomplished is to concentrate ALL market risk into a handful of massively overowned and overvalued stocks while leaving the majority of the market essentially bidless - outside of short-covering.

What was already a huge risk in January and February, just became an even bigger risk during the ensuing retracement rally, as everyone "hid" in the same COVID-safe virtual economy stocks.

On April 26th, Goldman warned about this increasing concentration. Which incidentally was the Monday prior to the FOMC meeting (29th), which also incidentally was the S&P top so far in this retracement rally.

"The five largest companies make up 20% of the gauge’s market capitalization, exceeding the 18% level the measure reached in March 2000"

If we look at the Tech ratio relative to Banks, this is what we see:

In summary, central banks have coordinated their efforts to create a Tech super bubble at the beginning of a new depression. Greed-addled gamblers have taken the exact same bait TWICE in two months.

And when this Virtual Economy super bubble explodes, not only will it explode the mass complacency bubble, but it will explode Trump Casino as well.

Exactly as Trump predicted it would in 2016 - due to excessive monetary lubrication:

Dead Money @ Peak Bullshit

The last and biggest bubble we face is the bubble in total bullshit and attendant addiction to printed money. This is the bubble that is about to explode with extreme dislocation. My assumption is that we have now seen peak stock market for the foreseeable future...

For those who say that no one can predict the future, I am merely predicting that massive amounts of bullshit are about to explode. I don't know if that necessarily makes me prescient. 

Among today's predictions, Wharton money printing expert Jeremy Siegel is saying we will never see the recent lows again and I am saying we will never see the recent highs again (inflation adjusted). Two diametrically opposed predictions. If I am right, then sooner rather than later those who believe that printed money is the secret to effortless wealth are about to shit a massive brick. 

I would point out that when new NYSE lows reached this same level in October 2008, the final market low was five months and -50% lower (equal weight). The key difference being THAT was a recession and THIS is a depression.

I realize that predicting peak stock market is a bold assumption given the amount of money printing taking place, however, my overall belief is that we have now achieved FULL Japanification. The Japanese Nikkei reached its peak in early 1990 - thirty years ago. Since that time - notwithstanding epic money printing and a 200% debt to GDP ratio - the old high still stands. Inflation adjusted of course, the REAL annualized return is much lower.

The Nikkei is currently at 1986 levels, the year I graduated from high school:

From a top down perspective I believe that we have achieved peak debt, peak tax cuts, peak profit margins, peak revenues, peak stock buybacks, peak valuation multiples, and peak corporate bailouts. Which means that overtaking the February highs will be challenging for years if not decades to come. On an inflation adjusted basis. 

The age of plundering the middle class for fun and profit is over.

"Mass bankruptcies, empty planes, cautious consumers and an increase in the corporate tax rate to as high as 29% were part of a vision Fink sketched out on a call this week. The message from the leader of the world’s biggest asset manager contrasts with the ebullient tones of a stock market that has snapped back from recent lows."

From a bottoms up perspective, these are the U.S. industries that I believe are on the verge of consolidation and bankruptcy over the coming year(s). Most of these industries will survive however, the equity holders will be wiped out, as will much of the debt:

Airlines, cruise lines, commercial real estate, mall retail, half of all restaurants, oil producers, commodity miners, some industrials (GE, Boeing, GM, Ford), profitless small caps, hotels, casinos, homebuilders, and most banks.

Of the remaining sectors, I believe that the healthcare sector is about to come under severe regulatory price controls. Staples, utilities, and defense stocks are now massively overvalued. 

Large cap Tech is a mega bubble ready to implode deja vu of Y2K. 

Here we see the Dow Internet index has round tripped to the February highs, however, the VVIX is back to where the most extreme part of the March collapse began (wave iii). Which portends much more extreme volatility this time around:

Post-crash, I expect the sectors that rally first will be gold miners, semiconductors and small cap value ex-banks. This not investment advice, merely observations that I will adjust as we go forward. 

As for the overall market, I believe that the inflation-adjusted peak was achieved in February at the Corona blow-off top. From this point forward, I believe the market will swing in a very wide range. Meaning that stocks can be rented but not owned. This being the top of the range. I believe central banks can keep the bottom from falling out entirely, so perhaps the range is -60% lower, not as low as the Great Depression decline of -90%. Although the Nikkei above lost -80% at the lows. 

All of which means that the stock market based retirement is now a widely believed popular fiction. The only way most people will retire is via Social Security which is why policy-makers need to make the changes ASAP to shore up the system. Corporations have failed society via health, wealth, and environmental destruction on a biblical scale. 

Meanwhile, public pensions are on the verge of mass insolvency as well, as payouts far exceed returns and contributions. Overly-optimistic predictions have put these state and local programs at risk of implosion. Ironically, Mitch McConnell's state of Kentucky is the WORST off in terms of under-funded public pensions. So maybe he will come around to a state and local bailout after all. Nevertheless, it will be a fraction of what is really needed. 

The biggest mistake ALL public pensions have made is to over-invest in stocks and bonds and make asinine predictions of future returns in the 6-7% range in an extreme deflationary environment. Most of these money managers will not successfully navigate the extreme deflationary/extreme inflationary paradigm we now face. Inflation-adjusted returns will likely be negative for years. In addition, state tax collections will collapse.

The vast majority of people who believe in rampant lying, extreme greed, money printing, bailouts for the rich, and mass delusion are merely call options on a multi-decade super-cycle. Massively levered to King Donny and his reign of circus. 

Useful carbon. In the American tradition.